The book that got me started down the memoir road (made of yellow brick) is Story Structure Architect: A Writer's Guide to Building Dramatic Situations & Compelling Characters. It was in placing my basic story into the fairly abstract structures and situations and potential resolutions that I could see the important story elements, and start writing. I love Zinsser, and there is Barrington's Writing the Memoir to cherish, and then after panning Vivian Gornick's memoir I picked up the book she wrote about writing memoir, and found it enchanting.
I didn't know when I read Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes, by Shoba Narayan, that there is a subgenre of memoir that mixes life and food. Narayan is a master, with a life filled with contrast and change, held together by her love for South Asian food. Somehow I don't yet want to read another Life plus Recipes memoir!
Monsoon Diary has already made it into The Reviews at Memoirista.com, as has Vivian Gornick's own memoir. Zinsser and Gornick and Barrington--not quite yet.